the mirror of erised
by swoodilypooper
Summary: "The happiest man on earth would use the Mirror of Erised and see himself exactly as he is. It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. Men have wasted away before it, not knowing if what they have seen is real or even possible." In which Calypso and Annabeth build sandcastles. Dedicated to Seraph's Blade.


Foreword: This one-shot is dedicated to Seraph's Blade. May your writer's crush live up to expectations. I promise to proof read later.

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**the mirror of erised**

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___Men have wasted away before it, not knowing if what they have seen is real or even possible. _It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to _**live **__- Albus Dumbledore_

The story began like it always did, Piper supposed. Boy meets girl, initial hatred gives way to begrudging friendship; soon enough romance blossoms – it was all so horribly hackneyed. However, when Piper caught sight of Annabeth slaving manically away every night on the beach, building _sandcastles_ like her life depended on it, she knew that there was something unique at work her.

This wasn't your typical story. Sure, it had your cliché elements, but there was something _different_ at work here. Cliché wasn't Annabeth working for hours building elaborate cathedrals, palaces, or monuments of sand. Cliché wasn't the taste of bitter tears mixed with ocean spray under a crescent moon. Cliché wasn't Percy and Annabeth because they were so much more, so much different than you or I, Piper figured.

Maybe their story came from humble beginnings – of country traversing rides in the back of trucks, of whispered midnight conversations and shared Oreo cookies, of Seaweed Brain's and Wise Girl's – but _look_ how far they'd come. Riding trucks gave way to holding skies, whispered midnight conversations became underwater kisses, and, Seaweed Brain's and Wise Girl's became "Seaweed Brain _and_ Wise Girl."

(_A singular entity, not disparate, mind you_)

This was a whole another animal, Piper thought to herself, watching her blonde friend work under the cover of nightfall. All she can do is pray that whatever Annabeth is so obsessed with finally brings peace to her hollow heart.

~oOo~

Hermes was worried. He knew that Calypso ailed, but he couldn't understand the castles made of sand. He couldn't understand those tender smiles, loving caresses, and forlorn glances, and what they had to do with sandcastles. He just didn't get it.

(_But maybe he's not supposed to_)

The God of Lies was a master at his craft, and that came part and parcel with having a keen eye for the truth. The truth of the matter was that, for Calypso, Percy Jackson never left Ogygia. For all intents and purposes, he was still there: wading into the water with an infectious grin; sitting in gardens of Moonlace, roaring with laughter; lying on his back watching the sunset with his fingers fitting like puzzle pieces with the spaces between her fingers. Hermes saw this, and he saw this sadly.

"He's gone Calypso," he wants to say. "He's _been_ gone."

(_But his words would have fallen on deaf ears_)

He hasn't seen her this way since Odysseus, and even he didn't spark this almost religious zeal with which Calypso worked every night under star-studded skies. Odysseus didn't have Calypso on her hands and knees making _sandcastles_ on the white shores of Ogygia – smiling, crying, laughing, dying – every night since he had left.

And there's a reason why.

~oOo~

Piper doesn't know Annabeth well enough to be of any use. She had sat down with some of the other campers, but they were all hush-hush about the whole affair, content to pretend that everything was alright with both her and the camp when they was anything but. Percy's name was taboo, the elephant in the room since his abrupt disappearance.

Eventually, she goes to the one person that will talk, that will give her answers; the Oracle. Piper's not quite sure what to expect when the bubbly red head thrusts a cup of boiling Chamomile tea into her hands, all grins and laughter. Her little cave is adorned with paintings of the past, present, and future, and it is one painting hidden away in the back that captures Piper's attention.

"What's that?" Piper asks, beckoning in its direction, her original purpose long forgotten.

Rachel darts away to grab the painting, returning with a contemplative frown. "Oh, this? I'm- I'm not really sure, to be honest."

Piper stares at the painting, a feeling of apprehension simmering inside her chest. It is a simple picture of a sandcastle, but it has been half destroyed by the waves. A once majestic tower sags into the ramparts, giving the piece a melancholy feel. Piper feels so terribly apprehensive and unsettled that her hand trembles as she sets her tea down.

When she looks up, her face is determined. "Rachel, what happened to Percy and Annabeth? Tell me everything."

~oOo~

Calypso has locked herself away in a land of fantasy where every night, she relives her memories with Percy. She sees him dance like a sprite on the shores, his laughter rings from every direction, so _full_ of life. The joy in his timbre makes her envious – oh, so envious. However, she cannot stop the slow grin that inevitably slides across her face every time she hears it.

This much Hermes can see, even if Calypso cannot.

He wants so desperately to grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard, to wake her up from the waking illusion that she was so mired in. Really, it was pitiful, verging on disgusting. Hermes wanted so much to be his usual callous self, to help her, but whenever he saw that sickening smile lingering on Calypso's lips, he thinks that maybe reality would be too much for her.

For Calypso, reality has all but ceased to exist. She lives in a fantasy, one where Percy had stayed with her forever on the white shores of Ogygia. This fantasy had entangled itself so in her psyche, calling upon the unfathomable want, loneliness, and melancholy, it _made_ itself a reality.

There is a time when Hermes sat in her gardens as she hummed to herself, planting Moonlace into the loamy soil with a slight smile, and she looked at him suddenly, saying, "Percy, didn't you say that your mother kept a flower garden back in your land?"

A lump forms in Hermes's throat as Calypso's eager smile slowly fades when she finally realizes that it is him not Percy sitting there with her.

(_But for a few seconds, he had been_)

Calypso hasn't just constructed a fantasy, Hermes realizes; Calypso is _reliving_ her past, every single day, trapped by her very memories, forced into a vicious, unending cycle, an infinite loop of memory, running round and round like a movie in her brain.

~oOo~

Annabeth had locked herself away in a nightmare of punishment. Annabeth had built sandcastles every night on the beaches of Camp Half-Blood, Piper learns, since the day that Percy disappeared. Since then, she has built and built glorious structures made of soft white sand, never the same structure twice. To see her sculpting was like seeing an artisan, gripped by the clutches of divine inspiration.

But every night, the waves inevitably lap away at her towers of sand as she helplessly watches, leaving her with an infinite expanse of sand for her to begin again. It's a Sisyphean task; Piper sees the futility of it all.

She wants to ask, "Why build the sandcastles if the water is just going to wash them away again in the morning?"

"You're only disappointing yourself," Piper wants to scream.

Piper can see how Annabeth is tormenting herself every single night on the beach, building sandcastles, because the hell of it is that Annabeth knows. Hell, Annabeth watches as the waves lap away at her creations. Annabeth may be Queen of the Beach, but the waves are the Gods of Punishment, and so she watches idly as all her hard work crumbles right before her eyes, every night without fail.

One night, Annabeth builds something, something that Piper can't see, when all of a sudden: she stops. For a few seconds, the Blonde simply stares at the sand, her eyes so sad that it brings tears to Piper's eyes. Annabeth's hand trembles as it touches the sand, and her pupil's water when the entire structure disintegrates.

When Annabeth finally leaves in the wee hours of morning, Piper walks onto the beach and completely breaks down. Half of a sand replica of Percy's grinning face remains on the beach.

(_Because Annabeth's mere touch melts the other half_)

~oOo~

Hermes does the unthinkable: he tells the truth.

(_He wishes with all his might that he could just lie like he always has instead_)

"Calypso," he begins, his heart heavy.

She looks up at him from her place lying on the sand, a contented smile on her lips. Hermes notes the way her fingers are curled as though there is another hand resting in hers. He knows that it is Percy's who her hands are grasping for.

"Yes, my lord?"

Hermes purses his lips. "This has to stop."

A look of beautiful puzzlement appears on her face. "What ever do you mean?"

"This notion you have of Percy still being around, this- this _fantasy_," Hermes proclaims. The effect is instantaneous. At the mention of the words "Percy" and "Fantasy," Calypso's countenance becomes, for once, ugly.

She sat up so quickly that grains of sand flew up with her. "Get out," she spits.

Hermes's eyes widen when he feels the raw, primal power of a Titan swirling about her like a storm. He may be a God, but she is a Titan, and she will splinter his bones and tear his skin if she must.

He disappears in an instant. The next instant, Ogygia lights with a strange whiteness that bathes the island in pure fantasy.

~oOo~

"Sometimes, I imagine that he's still here with me, you know?" Annabeth confides, her voice jagged like broken glass.

Piper sits beside her on the sand, watching her friend rolling her proverbial boulder up the hill, only to have it roll all the way back down.

Annabeth looks up at the water. "We used to do this, he and I," she whispered, her eyes distant. "We'd just sit here on the beach and build sandcastles. He'd always make these ghastly things, all lumpy and ill proportioned- you'd think the boy had never seen a castle in his life."

The Cherokee girl scooted closer to her friend, squeezing her shoulder affectionately. "Annabeth, why do you do this to yourself? Can't you see that you're just punishing yourself-"

"Because it's the only way that I can feel close to him! Don't you think I know? I know that this is self-destructive because no matter how big and how wonderful my castles are, the waves always, _always_, come every night and wash them away. But I deserve this because I drove him away," Annabeth laments, her voice raw with unadulterated emotion.

When Annabeth meets her eyes, Piper feels the breath leave her lungs. "I'm trapped, Piper. I see him every single night on this beach, laughing and joking, calling me his 'Wise Girl' and I relive it, and it's like some endless loop just playing in my head and it hurts so fucking bad, but it's the only way I can be with him anymore."

"But this isn't _healthy_, _Annabeth_," Piper protests, nearly at tears because as a daughter of Aphrodite, she can feel Annabeth's love, swirling about violently like a hurricane of emotion.

Annabeth barks a harsh laugh. "_Love_ isn't healthy, Piper; love isn't."

(_But Percy's definitely worth it, she adds in her head_)

~oOo~

"You think I don't know, Hermes?" Calypso asks, her voice trembling.

Hermes hesitates. She's never used his name before, always submissively referring to him as 'my lord' or 'Lord Hermes' never just 'Hermes.' He realizes that it's because she's beyond caring; eons on this wretched island have taken that much away from her.

"You think I don't know that I'm deluded? You think that I don't see what I'm doing to myself? Do you really think I am so naïve as to believe that everything is alright?" Calypso challenged.

When Hermes remained silent, Calypso continued. "I've been on this Island for eons, and I've had no quarry with what the Fates have done. The same story repeats itself – a hero appears, I tend to him, I fall in love with him, and he inevitably leaves. It's a cycle of perpetual punishment, but I never allowed myself to dream of anything less."

She paused. "When Percy Jackson came onto these distant shores, I expected nothing less, but Percy was different. He made me promises, promises of things I couldn't even dream about. He promised me freedom, and he delivered."

The sandcastle she's working on has been washed half away by the sea. A once majestic tower sags into the ramparts, giving the sight a melancholy feel. In a different land, one affected by the constraints of time, a painting depicting the sight perfectly hung in the Oracle's lair, traversing time and space with its clairvoyance.

"Then why are you still here, Calypso?"

The Titan smiled a bitter smile. "Because I am not yet ready to leave."

(_And she never will be, she adds to herself_)

Because Percy will always be too much for her; his love, his laugh, his everything would be beyond her reach. If Annabeth was Sisyphus, then that made her Tantalus; she would always have been able to have seen Percy, but he was _Annabeth's_, and that was Fate – she couldn't have changed that, nor would she have wanted to.

However, she did not possess a hardy enough constitution to see him everyday, his love, his laugh, his everything dedicated so entirely to another woman. The sight would have destroyed her, and this much Calypso knows, even if Hermes does not.

The truth is that Calypso is trapped, but it is all of her own design.

(_And she can't help but feel that things are better this way_)

~oOo~

Calypso and Annabeth both make sandcastles on distant shores, pining for the same boy who had so enraptured their hearts and minds as to have constructed nightmares and fantasies, punishing them forever with the power of bittersweet memory.

They built homages to the son of the sea god out of sand, each grain a moment constructing a whole palace of memory that simultaneously ensnared and liberated them from the realities that they had each chosen. However, no matter how much they tried to build their castles, it was Fate that cast the waves each night, to wash them all away.

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**A/N: So this is the product of angsty inspiration that woke me up at two in the morning; kind of a mix of "amor fati" and "Iron Hearts." There's a cool story behind this piece. So the central theme of Fantasy and Punishment actually derives from Naruto of all things. There are two jutsu in the Uchiha clan that transcend all others, one of which is called Izanagi and the other, Izanami. Izanagi is basically imposition of a fantasy on the real world, it makes your fantasies a reality, hence the "Fantasy" motif. The second jutsu, Izanami, was made as a way to punish those who had abused Izanagi and lived too long in their fantasy by making them constantly repeat a single memory. **

**This story juxtaposes both concepts except shows how they are similar rather than different. Calypso and Annabeth both are trapped (Izanami) in a fantasy where they are simultaneously rewarded and punished by having fantasies of Percy (Izanagi). Their fantasies punish them because they see something that isn't there, that isn't ****_real, _****but they are seeing their fantasy, which is something gratifying in the first place. It's kind of like the thing with the Mirror of Erised in the first Harry Potter Book (hence the title) - I think the quote explains it perfectly. This concept of fantasy/reality and pleasure/pain being tied is one of the most fascinating things to me.**

**Well, my rant aside, I hope you liked it, and as always: Follow, Favorite, and Review. How about being extra generous and reviewing even if you usually don't because I woke up in the middle of the night just to crank this out? XD**


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